Rishi Sunak turned up the heat on his successor Sir Keir Starmer over his party’s decision to scrap winter fuel payments to millions of pensions.
In a heated exchange during PMQs, the former Prime Minister challenged the Labour Government to publish “the impact assessment before the House rises” so that pensioners could see “full consequences of the choice” that the Government had taken.
Adding that the decision to make the benefit means tested had “nothing to do with the public finances”.
“He is the one that is taking money away from pensioners on £13,000. But this has got nothing to do with the public finances.
“His own Chancellor just this morning admitted that she would prefer it if this policy didn’t raise any money. Obviously, the Government would not have made this decision without an impact analysis and yesterday the energy minister confirmed that.
“So, I ask very simply again why won’t he publish the assessment now?”
Concluding: “We know why he is hiding the impact assessment. The Labour Party’s own previous analysis claimed that this policy could cause 3,850 deaths.
“So are the numbers in his impact assessment higher or lower than that?”
Dodging the quest, Sir Keir stuck to his script that the decision to scrap the benefit had been difficult but was necessary to try and plug the £22 billion black hole in the public finances, adding that the increases in the state pension will “outstrip any loss of payment”.
Sir Keir said: “Before he complains about us clearing up his mess, perhaps he would like to apologise for the £22 billion black hole?”.
“We are taking this decision to stabilise the economy. That means we can commit to the triple lock, by committing to the triple lock we can make sure that payments of state pension are higher and therefore there is more money in the pocket of pensioners, notwithstanding the tough action that we need to take.”
And poking fun at the outgoing Conservative Leader he said that he remembered “when the Conservative Party used to be concerned about balancing the books”.
The exchanged followed a bruising vote yesterday for the new Prime Minister on winter fuel payments that saw the largest rebellion against the Labour Government. Although the Government won the day with ease because of its huge Parliamentary majority, over 50 Labour MPs failed to vote against the Conservative motion aiming to reverse the decision to ditch the pensioner benefit. Later Labour sources claimed the numbers who abstained was much small as a number of those who did not attend the vote were busy with other business and unable to attend.
The winter fuel payment was introduced by Gordon Brown when he was chancellor in 1997 to tackle fuel poverty among pensioners, initially introduced at a rate of £20 it has risen to £300 this year.
Indeed, the introduction of the allowance, was one of the achievements that the former Labour leader would take great pride in listing. According to the Telegraph Mr Brown, it was the first thing he mentioned at the Labour Party Conference in 2009, describing it as a measure that showed the country politics “can make a difference”.
Sunak turns up the heat on Starmer
